The Riddle of Leaving

Emma sat on the edge of the bathtub, scissors poised, watching herself in the mirror. Six years with Michael, and she'd finally decided to cut it all off. Her hair fell past her shoulders, dark and heavy like the secrets they'd accumulated—each strand a memory she was ready to shed.

Michael called her stubborn, bull-headed in the worst arguments. But the truth was, she'd just stopped asking questions. Like a sphinx guarding its riddles, he kept his inner life walled behind impenetrable stone. She'd spent years trying to decode his silences, his sudden withdrawals, the way he'd stare past her at dinner as if listening to something she couldn't hear.

"You overthink everything," he'd say, turning away.

Outside, a cat yowled in the alley—that stray tomcat she sometimes fed, the one with the torn ear and battle-scarred face. She'd considered naming it, but naming meant attachment, and she was learning that attachments were just future wounds disguised as gifts.

The first snip of the scissors sounded like a breaking bone. Black curls fell into the sink, around her feet, piling up like dark snow. She kept cutting, shorter, shorter, until the mirror showed a stranger with exposed ears, a neck that felt strangely light. Vulnerable. New.

Michael would be home in an hour. She imagined him touching the stubble, the confusion in his eyes, the questions he'd finally ask. Too little, too late.

The riddle wasn't about him anymore. The sphinx had been her all along—guarding the answer to why she'd stayed so long in a maze with no center. She placed the scissors on the counter and ran her hands over her head, feeling the prickling warmth of beginnings.

Some endings require cutting to the bone.